Everyone who lived within a one-half mile of Friday’s fiery train wreck was told to leave their homes, but not everyone did.

Winnebago County’s outdoor warning sirens were not sounded after the derailment and explosion because emergency services officials determined it would be more efficient and safer to alert residents in the half-mile evacuation zone individually.

Winnebago County Sheriff Dick Meyers said the new outdoor-warning siren system, which features a chemical spill alert, was not activated for two reasons — the system, first tested June 2, was too new for people to know the difference between the tornado warning and the chemical spill warning and the area evacuated was too concentrated.

Meyers said officials briefly debated turning on one or two sirens in the area using the chemical spill warning but dismissed the idea after realizing the area that would hear the alert would be at least 3 miles or more if a second siren had to be sounded. Since officials only wanted to evacuate homes within a one-half mile of the explosion, they decided to use the county’s reverse 911 calling system instead and send fire personnel door to door.

“We worried that the sirens were so new that people who heard it, it would drive them into their basements, which is what we didn’t want to happen,” Meyers said. “We also worried that sounding a siren would hit an area much larger than what we needed to alert. It would have gone well beyond the limit, and at the time, we didn’t want to cause more chaos or panic.”

There also were dozens of firefighters, police and sheriff’s deputies who went door to door throughout the subdivisions near the crash.

An evacuation was ordered shortly after a train carrying 78 tankers of ethanol derailed and caught fire. The reason for the evacuation was to protect area residents, Meyers said.

“There was the threat of toxins spreading in the air, the threat of further explosions and the threat of the fire spreading,” Meyers said. “We knew when we ordered it that there would be some people who wouldn’t comply. We couldn’t stand and watch them pack and leave. That would have been a waste of time. We had to move on to other houses.

“We considered it mandatory. Everything we issued through the media was that it was mandatory. I’m sure the different officers and firefighters told people that there was an evacuation and put their own spin on it to encourage people to leave, but there shouldn’t have been any people confused about what was the right thing to do. They got the reverse 911 call, too. It wasn’t a situation where we wanted to take people kicking and screaming or threaten to arrest them if they resisted.”

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Meyers, who headed up the evacuation process, said it was an appropriate reaction, and most people reacted appropriately to it. Residents were allowed back into their homes late Saturday afternoon.

Some residents praised officials in their handling of the evacuation. Others complained that it wasn’t done fairly.

“There were people coming into the area Friday night and Saturday, but we believe they were walking into the neighborhoods. They weren’t supposed to be there. Some were coming down from the bypass,” Meyers said. “We were talking about arresting some kids who seemed to be playing on the railroad tracks, but we just got them out of there instead and went back to dealing with the crash. The main thing was to get them out of danger.”

The county’s reverse 911 system, which can be programmed to call all county residents or a particular set of homes within the county, sent out 592 calls Friday night, Meyers said.

The county installed 73 outdoor emergency warning sirens this spring for $2.67 million in an effort to warn people who are outside (away from television, radio or computer news or weather alerts) of an imminent emergency, such as a tornado, chemical spill or terrorist attack.

The county still is in the process of testing the system and educating residents on what to do when they hear the different alarms, Meyers said.